This invention relates generally to controls for cooking appliances and, more particularly, to a rotary dial control to enter control information for cooking appliances.
As technology has advanced in cooking appliances, the complexity and number of control systems for selecting cooking options and control information has increased. Accurately selecting and inputting the control information and cooking options available to a user for each specific food to be cooked, increases the likelihood that the food will be cooked correctly.
Cooking appliances typically include an array of keypads mounted to a control panel for enabling an operator to enter and select the feature options, and a numerical key pad numbered 0–9. The complexity of the control panel and the number of keypads mounted to the control panel increases as the appliance functionality and features increase. Such control panels are often complex for users to understand, offer little flexibility to the users, and do not provide users with an opportunity to adjust or review in-progress cooking without terminating the cooking.